For the Exploding Birds
by The Wanlorn
Summary: In which birds explode or don't and promises are made or aren't .
1. Chapter 1

"Did you know-"

Mary dropped her head back on the couch and groaned, hoping that _just this once_ that would be enough to stop Marshall before he got rolling on another pointless tangent. To make her point, she sat forward to get the remote, and turned up the volume a little.

"-that people didn't always throw rice at weddings? Grains have symbolized fertility and prosperity for millennia. When the custom originally started, wheat was far more readily available than rice, so wedding guests would throw wheat to-"

"Marshall." She gestured between herself and the TV. "Do you see what I'm trying to do here? You wanted to watch _MythBusters_. _You_ promised me 'exploding bird stomach analogues.' And now I'm trying to watch the exploding bird stomachs, and you're preventing me from doing that. Will you shut up?"

He stretched his legs out at the other end of the couch, stuffing his hands in his pockets and grinning at her. "Don't try to pretend you don't love this show."

"I love explosions," she corrected, trying to keep the frown on her face, turning away from the TV to glance at him.

He inclined his head a little, conceding the point. Something crinkled in his pocket, and he pulled out a brightly colored foil packet, tearing it open before she could figure out what it was and holding the contents out to her. "So, want to get married?"

She stared at the ring pop (_ring pop_, what the hell? She hadn't had one of those since before her dad left) for a moment, trying to decide if her stomach had just clenched out of excitement or horror. He just sat there, holding it out (and of _course_ if he was going to propose he was going to do it with something ridiculous like a lollipop), his eyebrows quirked slightly as he waited for her to recover.

"Really?" she asked, looking between his eyes and the pop again and floundering a little. She fell back on what she knew best. "You couldn't wait until the commercial break?"

He shrugged a little, smiling like he was just asking what she wanted for dinner. She didn't understand how he could look so calm while he waited for her to stop avoiding the question. "I figured I'd better ask before you found out that rice doesn't actually make birds explode."

"Thanks for ruining the ending," she said, and then paused for a moment. "What if I say no?"

He shrugged again. "Then I get to eat the ring pop."

"Marshall," she said, not smiling.

"I'm serious. If you don't want to get married, you don't want to get married. It's not as though you suddenly love me any less, it just means I was wrong in thinking your not wanting to get married was only applicable to certain people and not a general state of being."

That was reassuring, and the panicked flutter in her stomach started to subside. "Why?"

"Why get married?" She nodded. "I'd be getting married because I love you. You'd be getting married for the exploding birds."

She started to smile a little, one side of her mouth quirking up in something bordering on a smirk. "I thought you said they busted that."

"I'm sure we could find something else for people to throw."

Her smile grew wider. "And you thought the best way to get me to agree to get married was with a ring pop?"

He grinned back at her as he drew his bare foot up onto the couch so he could rest his arm on his knee. "If you even want a real ring, I thought you'd rather pick it out yourself."

She laughed a little, partly because it was true, and partly out of relief that he understood that. She tried to come up with something that would change if they did get married, something in their relationship that would be different, and she couldn't think of anything. The tight feeling in her stomach completely eased away, replaced with a quiet calmness. If she married him, the only thing that would change would be the lack of a ring on her finger, and that wasn't exactly an earth-shattering difference.

"Yeah, okay," she said, reaching for the pop, only to have him pull it back.

"'Yeah, okay?'" He said, not quite able to stop grinning enough to frown at her. "That isn't very enthusiastic."

She socked him in the arm, then leaned back so he couldn't retaliate, needlessly it turned out. "What did you expect? Give it to me."

"Something more enthusiastic than a 'Yeah, okay,'" he said, not even trying not to grin anymore and stretching his arm back and away from her so she couldn't grab the pop.

"I'll give you an enthusiastic kick in the pants," she said, laughing a little as she pushed him down and pinned him to the couch, planting her knees on either side of his torso to make up the height difference so she could reach the end of his arm. He let go of the pop easily, and she slid it onto her finger, the rough bit where the plastic joined scratching her a little. Still keeping him pinned to the couch, she sat back and looked down at him. "I don't want a big, fancy wedding."

"I know," he said, his hands coming to rest on her hips. "We can do it at city hall, if you want."

She nodded a little. "And I'm not going to start doing your laundry or making dinner every night or anything."

He grinned. "I'd think you were replaced by a pod person if you did."

A grin spread across her face in response to the goofy look on his. This was worth not getting to see fake bird stomachs burst from expanding rice. "You're an idiot, you know that?"

"If I ever forget, I'll have you here to remind me."

THE END


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes: **Written for the "Name any story I've written, and any character in them, canon or OC. I'll tell you three things about that character which I didn't put in the story" meme.

**Mary**

1. Something Mary would never admit to anyone, even under pain of death, was that the ratio of "times she was actually annoyed with Marshall's trivia" to "times she said she was annoyed" is embarrassingly low. At some point, it switched from being annoying when they first started working together, to being background noise, to being kind of cute. Over the years, it had become a sort of soothing background noise by its constant presence, and when he wasn't around, she kind of missed it. Not that she'd ever give him the satisfaction of telling him that.

2. If Marshall _really_ wanted a fancy wedding, if it was really important to him, she would have done it. She wouldn't've put it past him to have the entire thing planned out in the kind of girly fantasy she never understood. She would have felt ridiculous the entire time, but she'd do it for him. Still, when they did end up down at the courthouse, she was incredibly relieved.

3. Mary didn't like feeling trapped. Anyone who knew her for more than five minutes could figure that out. Marshall managed to hit the perfect blend of "I'm not trying to hold on to you and if you want to leave I wouldn't turn it into a big deal" and "but I do care about you a lot." She was surprised that he asked her to marry him, but she _wasn't_ surprised that he managed to do it in the most non-threatening way possible. That was probably the only way she would have ever agreed to marry him, considering what happened with her last two attempts at marriage. It was hard to feel like she needed to get away when faced with a piece of candy as an engagement ring, and the guy asking her was telling her that if she said no, it wouldn't matter.

**Marshall**

1. Marshall had a Twitter account. Originally, he signed up because having all of MythBusters's tweets forwarded to his phone was the easiest way to get notified when they were looking for volunteers. (One day, he was going to take a vacation and be able to make it up to California to be a volunteer.) But it didn't take long before he started following Adam and Grant, too. After that, it was just a slow slide into following more and more people. He tried to keep Mary from seeing his screen when he was reading tweets, knowing there would be no end to the mocking if she ever found out. (He was right.)

2. Marshall never actually planned to ask Mary to marry him. In fact, his plan for the future with Mary didn't contain anything that even resembled getting married, because the idea of Mary agreeing to marry anyone again was ridiculous. He didn't need that as proof that she loved him. But one of the kids of one of his witnesses had given him the ring pop earlier that day, and when he reached into his pocket, planning to eat it, it just felt like a _moment_. Later, if he was going to get all mushy about it, he'd call it serendipity (but he'd never say that to Mary's face).

3. Still, the instant the words left his mouth, he realized that what had sounded like a good idea in his head for the five seconds he thought about it was actually a _horrible idea_. It wasn't that he didn't want to marry her; he fully intended to spend the rest of his life together, as long as she didn't have other plans. But if there was one thing that would make Mary head for the hills, he was pretty sure it would be a proposal. He spent the next couple seconds trying to act as calm and nonchalant as possible while he frantically tried to figure out damage control. When she said yes, he couldn't have been more surprised than if she'd sprouted wings and a tail. After years of being her friend, and years of dating, he had become very good at covering shock with teasing. It turned out that was also useful for covering incredible relief.


End file.
